A Record of Occupancy

1959 - 1968: A carpenter and his family. Toil and the sweat of the brow. Man of the house was a veteran of the war in Korea, but no officer. Long period of unemployment before marriage which settled him into woodworking. He got married in Topeka, but they moved to a new town soon after and they rented an apartment for three years. He worked as an apprentice until he had the hours for journeyman, and then made the down payment for a loan to build the house. Uncomplicated. Shallow roof pitch, lap siding, but real wood all the way around. They bore four children in ‘60, ‘63, ‘65, and ‘67 and attended the Lutheran church a few blocks down. Garage added for the Lincoln in ‘66. End of ’68 they sold the house for a good profit and moved to Malibu, where he followed roughly the same pattern into retirement. He died a wealthy man and gave his sons some inheritance.

1968-1972: An accountant for a local insurance company. Fresh graduate from the University. Worked while he was at school as a sales associate at a hardware store and seems to have paid his down payment with earnings and with a little help from parents. Lived alone. Held down the job at the insurance company until 1968 and then got engaged. A long engagement: long enough that he was drafted to fight in Vietnam in winter 1969 before the wedding. Seems to be a fluke (too old to be so far ahead in the lottery), but he did not dodge. Ended up in the US Army in combat infantry. Leg blown off by an anti-personnel mine near the end of his term of service. Returned to the insurance company for a short time afterwards, and never moved from the house, which he retained while in Vietnam. In 1972 he sold the house and moved to California. Seems to have entered the self-help huckster circuit. Falls off the map in the 80’s. Marriage to the girl was never finalized.

1972-1989: Man and wife and child move in summer of 1972. Man was a professor of Ancient Near Eastern history at the university and came from a fantastically wealthy family involved in the oil business who presumably paid his way, but the wife worked for a time as a dental hygienist, nonetheless. Normal career until 1976, and then it seems to have been thrown into limbo by the professor’s sympathies with a black nationalist student association. Briefly suspended. By this time the wife had quit her job as the hygienist and the couple had two new children. After the near-firing incident, the professor seems to have cooled down and in 1980 he was finally given tenure. In 1985 he became the chair of the history department and in this same year their youngest child was killed by a speeding car on their street. A blistering incident. Total unreality, and a long recovery. But they did not move, as the oldest daughter was nearly graduated from high school at this time. In 1989 the professor’s father died, initiating a management crisis in the family oil business and the professor was more or less forced to move. The family, sans the two oldest children, moved to Texas to help manage the succession of business duties. He served on the board of directors and one of his daughters became a poet of regional renown in Ohio.

1993-2000: The house took a while to sell because it had fallen into a state of severe disrepair by the time the professor moved. He was not a handy fellow. Cracked foundation, sagging drywall in the guest suite which was not discovered until the ceiling collapsed during an open house in 1991. Old plumbing, lead paint, asbestos insulation, split and water damaged siding. In 1992 a building contractor bought the house and conducted a full remodel. He took out a wall to make the kitchen larger, replaced several walls which had shifted so far out of level that they appeared to lean, and had the house lifted so that the foundation could be repaired. The interior was completely repainted and the old trim thrown out and replaced. Then he stripped the old wood lap siding and replaced it with vinyl and threw out the old cedar shake shingles for asphalt. The house sold in 1993 to a man who lived in the next town over. He rented it out at $400 a month to a family of one man, a plumber, his wife, and their six-year-old. Good tenants overall, but the wife took after her parents’ new age spiritual syncretism and the house never shook the smell of incense after they moved. The owner updated the lease accordingly. From 1996 until 2001, the house was occupied for no longer than one year by four separate lessees: college students, a small family, and then a single man who would be arrested on charges of possession of heroin and methamphetamine in spring 2000. The next tenant was a poor old widower who had made a living at one time as a surveyor, but at that time he only received social security. The owner inexplicably accepted his application, and the old man died a few months later, on election day. The first death in the house. Myocardial infarction at 8PM. The emergency responders found him slumped in a recliner in front of his TV, his glasses reflecting incredulous spectra claiming a Gore victory. “He only needed live a little longer and perhaps he wouldn’t have died,” the owner said to his wife afterward. They cleaned out the property, throwing out at least one ton of HAM radio equipment, old electronics, books on Babylon, Israel and Apocalypse, and paid $200 at the dump for their trouble. Seeing the direction in which the neighborhood seemed to be heading, and the absurd difficulty of managing a rental property, the owner sold in summer 2001, ending forever his foray into real estate, though he made a decent profit.

2001-2022: Another young carpenter bought the house in the summer, and with him came a pregnant wife. He paid for the house with a national guard housing allowance and one year’s worth of consistent sixty-hour week earnings. Son born in late August, and then airplanes flew screaming into the Gotham megaliths, those symbols of some global importance. Synecdoche for America. Shining twin phalli impaled and sundered. He didn’t hear about it until he got home from work. Called up for training within three months. Son laughed for the first time the day he left. He expected to be deployed but did not and returned home to alternate between work and training at a higher tempo. Wife and child began spending more time at grandparents, who lived nearby. Occasional fights. Child began to talk in late 2002 and grew a good head of hair. In 2003 he left for Washington to train at Ft. Lewis and then he was deployed in 2004 to Iraq. He saw violence levied against all life. Carcasses ripped apart and resealed, pressure plates in poorly stitched dogflesh. A Humvee rent in two, careening fragments, doors, nails, helmets, legs and smoke arcs. People he knew. Cracks, pressure on the sinuses and the rough grain of blasted concrete on exposed fingertips. Ringing, ringing, ringing. When he came home, he told his wife he would not close his contract with the National Guard. He reenlisted again and again. Something there in the desert which needed killing, which was not there in that house and never could be, if he could help it. He saw ruins in Mosul, and the citadel at Erbil.  He worked for certain agencies and consorted with men in sweltering shipping containers and teahouses. At home his wife could feel these things in the dark when she closed her eyes; the old house groaned and creaked to fit them. And that phantom smell: balsam and myrrh. Somewhere along the way she did not have to work anymore and raised that son practically alone. Resentment. But by 2022 the soldier is finally and safely retired. A long career. He wonders that he lives, and knows he failed to kill the Gods of those cities. His son still lives at home, and his wife is old and sweet, looks twenty years younger than him, because years were lost somewhere in those walls, which have been torn apart and remodeled, the kitchen backsplashed. The house creaks in spite. One night the father awakes and finds the son in the kitchen, swaddled in his blanket staring from the window down at the dim street lit by one old lamp. The father looks at the sleepwalking son, realizing he never taught him carpentry. The trade of my youth. He wonders if he should sell the house.